As part of the programme, the startup will be provided with services & credits worth $80,000. The services include mentorship from Facebook’s engineering teams and services from its partners like Amazon Web Services, Dropbox, Adobe, and MailChimp. Besides partners, it will give free access to more than 25 services including open source tools like React Native, FB Login and Account Kit and App Analytics.

iReff was launched in 2013 by Nizam Mohideen (CEO), Prasanna Hegde (CTO) and Rajesh Badgeri (COO). The main idea is to solve the information problems of millions of Indian consumers using mobile platform.

As Nizam stated, “Every operator has 100s of plans to choose from at any time and in a competitive market operators keep changing these plans, which makes it hard for consumers to discover the best plan for their needs. It is not practical to get this information by calling up operator call-center, or asking any recharge shop or talking to friends every time.”

iReff thus help equip users with all the available information and tools, and empower them to make the best decisions. “There are many ways to recharge, and iReff allows users to use their favorite recharge mode. Being agnostic to the recharge mode makes us unique in the marketplace. This allows us to offer popular recharge modes such as USSD self activation using main balance with just the click of a button, which is not available anywhere else,” added Nizam.

Another unique feature on iReff enables users to recharge from their bank using the SMS Mobile Banking feature, again with just a click of a button. The app currently support ICICI customers.

The app is available on Android, Windows Phone and iPhone and works in both online and offline mode. The founders claim to have more than 5 million downloads across Android and other platforms, with a 4.4 rating on the Play store.

They further plan to roll out prepaid balance and usage tracking features, additional partnerships with recharge providers, and many more features to help prepaid users make the best use of their prepaid connection.

Facebook launched FbStart in 2014 with an aim to help early-stage mobile startups build and grow their apps. It provides an exclusive community, worldwide events, and mentorship from Facebook to the startups along with $80K in free tools and services.

FbStart includes three tracks, viz., Pre-launch (up to $15K benefits), Bootstrap (up to $30K benefits), and Accelerate (up to $80K benefits). The programme provides free access to more than 25 services including open source tools like React Native, FB Login and Account Kit and App Analytics.

India is the largest market for FbStart outside the US. According to the product partnerships team at Facebook, over 75% of top-grossing apps in India get integrated with Facebook.